


What Dreams May Come

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Paint The Sky With Stars [31]
Category: Night World - Fandom, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Witches, Crossover, Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 04:04:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7298851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, Any, It’s not just the Gate teams suffering from PTSD-related nightmares."</p><p>Jennifer Keller has nightmares about vampires, Kusanagi can't sleep, and Team Lorne continues to be lame at magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Dreams May Come

Jennifer came awake, gasping for air. The images were still vivid in her mind, and she tried to blink them away, but they were brighter against her eyelids, and when she shook her head to try to clear them, it just made her dizzy.  
  
It was all her Uncle Ron’s fault. He’d let her watch Nosferatu when she was three, and she’d had screaming nightmares about vampires ever since, especially when she was stressed.  
  
When she’d transferred out to Atlantis with the first new wave on the Daedalus, she’d looked through the medical files of as many patients as possible, partially to pass the time on the long flight, and partially because she wanted to be prepared. Because...aliens.  
  
And she saw a note in Colonel Sheppard’s file: _lamia, in remission, triggered by blood intake; half hearth_.  
  
It made no sense until she got to Atlantis, and she heard: vampires were real. Not just space vampires who sucked people’s life force, but Earth vampires who sucked blood. And Colonel Sheppard was one of them. She’d avoided him whenever possible. The first time she saw him, though, she was...disappointed. He didn’t look like the sexy, sleek vampires in books or movies. He looked too old. Not that he was bad-looking. He was good-looking, one of the best-looking men Jennifer had ever seen. But he wasn’t supernaturally good-looking. Except for his eyes. They changed color in the light. On his file they were listed as ‘hazel’, but that was woefully inadequate.  
  
Judging by the number of times Sheppard ended up in the infirmary, he didn’t possess any supernatural strength or speed or healing abilities. He bled just like every other soldier.  
  
And then she saw him when he escaped from the Genii. He walked into the infirmary under his own power, and there was something - off about him. He stripped down to his boxers and submitted to a hospital gown with aplomb, and there was a predatory grace to his movements she’d never seen before, and the slide of muscle under skin was hypnotizing. His skin had an unearthly glow, and when he looked at her, his eyes were pure silver.  
  
He wasn’t human.  
  
And then Beckett ordered him strapped to a bed, locked in a quarantine room, with a marine posted at the door armed with pencils. And for days, everyone had to listen to Sheppard’s agony.  
  
Blood withdrawal, Beckett explained grimly. Not even magic could ease the pain.  
  
That was the other thing. Magic. The first time Jennifer watched Beckett heal someone with glowing energy in his cupped palms, she couldn’t believe it. He rarely used it to heal someone all the way, just enough to stabilize them before conventional medicine could be used, because as he explained it, healing magic was draining.  
  
Magic Jennifer could cope with. She’d read the reports. Ancients could heal things, do things like magic. Magic was science they just didn’t understand yet.  
  
But there had been rumors about Major Lorne, who could turn into a panther, or something equally outlandish. Jennifer hadn’t put any stock into those claims, though she noticed in Lorne’s file that he was in textbook-perfect health, and he didn’t spend nearly as much time in the infirmary as his teammates, always managed to come away from an encounter with a few minor scratches. And then rumors flew across the base again, Sheppard had broken up with Lorne (apparently everyone but Jennifer was getting some, even soldiers who had to violate regs to get it), and Lorne was moping around the city as a panther, Twilight-style, and then Jennifer saw him.  
  
Not a panther, but a sleek black jaguar, stalking along the railing of one of the balconies, dark fur rippling, lovely rosette patterns just barely visible in its velvety fur. It looked much larger than any jaguar Jennifer had ever seen at a zoo, and then it had turned and _looked_ at her. And she’d fled.  
  
Major Lorne had come to her the next day to apologize for startling her, and oh hell. It was real. Vampires, witches, shapeshifters. All of it.

Jennifer had thought she was prepared for the Stargate Program, for the strangeness and perils of alien worlds. She’d never known that Earth was just as strange, just as dangerous, and for some reason the strangeness of the Earth-based aliens made her feel even more helpless than the Wraith ever had. But at least having the monsters on her side meant she had a better chance of surviving the Wraith, right? Major Lorne could rip a Wraith’s head off its shoulders with his jaws. Colonel Sheppard could, in a pinch, hypnotize any human captors so his team was let go.  
  
Atlantis had been turned on its head with Sheppard’s freak-out and Lorne and Ronon running away, and nothing was safe anymore, not the wide universe, and not the people on base.  
  
Jennifer’s thoughts tumbled over and over in her head, tripping over the images of Sheppard, fangs bared, pinning her down and tearing out her throat. She walked quickly, trying to keep a steady pace, concentrating on her footfalls, left-right-left-right, but she could _feel_ his icy hands on her, feel -  
  
“That is patently unfair.”  
  
Jennifer paused. She was passing by some of the rec rooms, rooms set aside for social time, like games or movies or just hanging out.  
  
Inside the room were marines and a scientist. Kusanagi. It took a moment, but then Jennifer recognized Stevens’s gleaming ebony skin, Walker’s red hair, Coughlin’s pale blond hair, Reed’s tight curls. Lorne’s team. Former team. Stevens had his own team now.  
  
“Usus magister est,” Kusanagi said.   
  
All five of them had candles in front of them. Stevens’s looked burned around the edges. Walker, Coughlin, and Reed’s candles looked like they’d never been used. Kusanagi’s was lit.  
  
“I don’t speak Ancient,” Stevens said.  
  
“Not Ancient,” Walker said. “Latin. Practice makes perfect.”  
  
“We practice all the time,” Stevens said.  
  
Kusanagi sighed, and her candle went out. Then it winked back on.  
  
“How do you _do_ that?” Reed peered at her candle.  
  
“I’m naturally good at meditation,” Kusanagi said. “Also I took judo in PE in high school and had to learn to meditate. And I’m a natural gene carrier, which helps.”  
  
“We’re all natural gene carriers,” Coughlin said sourly. “It’s why the Genii snatched us a few years ago.”  
  
Kusanagi took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes. “I practice a lot. Can’t sleep much these days.”  
  
“Nightmares?” Walker’s expression was sympathetic.  
  
“Soldiers aren’t the only ones who get them.” Kusanagi’s candle winked out again. She put her glasses back on and then leaned her chin on her hands, and Coughlin’s candle lit.  
  
“Hey!” He blew it out, indignant. “You have your own.”  
  
“Did you make a wish?” Walker asked.  
  
“No,” Coughlin said slowly. “It’s not my birthday.”  
  
Stevens frowned. “When _is_ your birthday?”  
  
Coughlin shrugged. “Who knows? Atlantis’s calendar doesn’t match up with Earth’s at all.”  
  
“Major Lorne would have known,” Reed said.  
  
Stevens nudged him. “He’s not _dead_.”  
  
“You heard what Beckett said,” Reed protested.  
  
“Major Lorne might have god-like powers, but he’s not like Adolf Hitler,” Stevens snapped.  
  
“But that’s what Sheppard thinks. He’s training us all to kill Major Lorne, and you know it.” Reed’s expression was mulish.  
  
“I thought it was kinda weird, you know, Sheppard being a witchy-vampire and all. Beckett’s a cool witch, and Major Lorne being a were-jaguar is badass, but vampires are just creepy.” Coughlin shuddered. “The Wraith are basically vampires. But I never thought Sheppard was, you know, crazy.”  
  
“He’s not,” Walker said, loyal to a fault, “but we don’t understand their politics. Something else is going on.”  
  
“Something crazy,” Coughlin muttered.  
  
“Keep practising,” Stevens said, sharply. “This’ll be useful against any enemy, not just the Wraith. And Major Lorne will be just fine. He’s Major Lorne.”  
  
“You don’t happen to know any baku, do you?” Kusanagi asked.  
  
“Baku?” Walker echoed.  
  
Dream eaters, Jennifer knew. They ate people’s dreams. She wondered if they could be fed nightmares.  
  
She turned and headed back for her quarters and wondered, if she had magic, if that would make her feel better.  
  
Somehow she thought it would make her feel worse.


End file.
